1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a map display terminal and a map display method. More particularly, the invention relates to a map display method for displaying a map corresponding to a current position on the basis of a current position information.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the recent years, an apparatus displaying a current position utilizing a Global Positioning System (GPS) technology has been widely spreading primarily for vehicular navigation system. In such apparatus, a map data to be displayed is stored in a storage medium, such as CD-ROM or the like so as to display a corresponding map on the basis of a current position information obtained by GPS.
On the other hand, in addition to application for the vehicular navigation system, a handy type map display terminal has been put into practical use. Since these apparatus are required to be portable, the apparatus are compact to be impossible to store all of map data, amount of which is huge. Therefore, these apparatus are designed to download the necessary map data by means of communication means.
As advantage of a system, in which the map data are arranged in a map server on a network and is downloaded as required, the latest map data can be constantly provided, and the user may able to obtain the latest map data constantly. It is also possible to distribute real-time information, such as traffic information or the like by embedding in the map data.
In case of the handy type map display terminal set forth above, in which the map data is downloaded, portability of such type of the map display terminal is essential to make a display area narrow to cause difficulty of displaying information of a destination and facilities, such as railway station, intersection and so forth, to be landmarks, in one picture frame. Therefore, when map display is performed taking the destination (current position) at the center of display, difficulty is encountered in detecting the relationship with the peripheral condition.
On the other hand, in case of the handy type map display terminal set forth above, until completion of downloading of the map data for initially displaying the map after completion of downloading, the user may not be able to check the progress of downloading.